One of the aims of this site is to comment on new research developments in the area of online journalism and news production innovations, specially highlighting those that share the spirit of Making Online News. The study on convergence in two regional media groups in Spain by García Avilés and Carvajal recently published in the journal Convergence is a good example.
The authors based their research on qualitative interviews with a wide range of journalistic positions in the two analyzed newsrooms and a brief two-day observation of the working routines, including news meetings. Researchers approached their object of study with the aim of avoiding “oversimplifying the analysis”. They tried to overcome linear models such as the one by Dailey et al. (2005) or research implying that newsroom convergence is a mere “effect” of technological change (see Garrison and Dupagne, 2006).
The rich description of routines and the evolution of the projects, coupled with the interpretations by the protagonists themselves offer a very detailed explanation of two different approaches to convergence, what the authors label as “integrated model” and “cross-media model”. The authors identify the attitude of the managers and their ability to engage the newsrooms in the process as the key for success. Training and defining the boundaries between collaboration and competition seem the main practical challenges.
García Avilés, J.A. and Carvajal, M. (2008) Integrated and Cross-Media Newsroom Convergence: Two Models of Multimedia News Production –The Cases of Novotécnica and La Verdad Multimedia in Spain. Convergence, 14(2), 221-239
See also the review at Infotendencias (in Spanish)
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This website is the virtual home of a research project that started many years ago as separate efforts to understand a new phenomenon: Media all around the world have been exploring the Internet as a news medium for more than a decade now, creating a new breed of journalism. Online journalism is here to stay, and we, as media researchers, were excited to observe the development of a new form of newsmaking.
In different countries, from Germany to the US, from China to Argentina, different researchers started to investigate the trends. And we ended up getting to know each other in conferences and through papers. What we had in common was the willingness to understand how media dealt with innovation, with new languages and logics. And each of us was convinced that the better way to explore this was to step into the online newsrooms and live with the journalists, their expectations and their worries.
Chris Paterson had the idea of putting together a book based on this ethnographic research of online newsrooms back in 2003, as a spin off of the Media Production Analysis group at IAMCR. In the last four years we have invited pioneers and new scholars interested in online newsroom research to summarize their findings to generate the first collective exploration of online journalism from the inside, a critical look at the routines and values of the new frontier of news production.
And as the book becomes a reality (will be published by Peter Lang in May 2008), we would like it to be a starting point: An invitation for much-needed ethnographic research in the newsrooms of converging media in a moment of profound transformations. This website wants to turn the book into the core of a network of researchers that will share their experiences through this blog. You are invited to join the conversation in the comments section below each story or sending an email to info [at] makingonlinenews.net.
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